inclementimmigrantGaming Website Polgyon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Layoffs
ampersandrewGiant Bomb also going through some shit right now. They just put up a podcast with a big middle finger to their new bosses, and it got pulled.
EDIT: Giant Bomb may be dead as of this afternoon.
Oh that’s actually pretty sad to hear—I did not realise they had new owners
They’ve been owned by Fandom for a little while now, and they even made some good changes lately, but then someone a few rungs up the corporate ladder was replaced with someone who decided to make a pretty huge change to the company that basically compromises the entire point of Giant Bomb, if not also Gamespot.
Do you know what were the ‘core values’ of the new Fandom they betrayed?
If you listen to episode 888, you’ll hear pretty quickly exactly why they got fired and why they thought it was important to do what they did.
Fuck. Long time, first time. I’m a few episodes behind. Any additional info available? Links?
See my other comment below, but the gist of it is that they were told to pause streaming for a while as everyone tries to figure out a path forward. They put out one Bombcast that rebelled against the new Fandom “values”, and you can find a link to it if you look through Bluesky or the Giant Bomb reddit. They’re still paused, and it’s been about a week now. It might be the end of Giant Bomb, in which case, Grubb, Mike, and Dan have sworn to keep doing Blight Club, and the others are probably preparing their parachutes too. It also might not be the end of Giant Bomb; nothing’s been decided yet, and everyone currently still has their jobs.
Aww geez. Thanks for the summary duder. Been at a conference in the bay so kinda detached from it all. Gonna be wild if Fandom is the shitdicks that kill GB.
If Episode 888 is the last Bombcast, it will leave the world with the integrity that created it in the first place. Give it a listen, when you get around to it.
Copy that. Found a drop on archive.org. Planning to grab it when I’m back home. Cheers friend!
Awesome. Yet another reason to donate to the IA!
Breaking news: Grubb seems to have been let go.
What the fuck.
Jeffool Dan removed GB from his BSky bio, and Grubb posted that he’s no longer with GB.
To add more context, last night Dan was streaming on Twitch and said he expects episode 888 to be the last Bombcast. He said things that, if he stays employed, would make Fandom the most understanding employer ever. To use words he used: he’s very annoyed with working for giant corporations and wants to bet on himself.
Here we are, 17 years after a bunch of clueless suits fucked with GameSpot and led to the creation of Giant Bomb. Now it’s a whole new set of clueless suits fucking with Giant Bomb. It’s the circle of capitalism.
I was in deep for GB until the Nextlander split and slowly trailed off since then. I still have mad respect for that group and follow most of them in one way or another. This is a new level of dire for them.
The Giant Bomb Preservation Project still appears to be active so… at least there’s that I guess.
It’s looking like GB is now dead. At the very least, I’m confident I’ll continue to get Blight Club and Jeff’s news show, even though they won’t be at a site called Giant Bomb. Hopefully everyone else found a place where they can land on their feet. Their personal brands are stronger than Fandom’s.
savutanoLet’s be real, it has been dead for a while.
I fell off just post-pandemic, but I came back when Gerstmann left, and it was great for a long while again.
I left with Jeff, Vinny Brad n Alex, tried to come back a few times, but it just never hit the same.
Lucy & Tamoor were great since their Gamespot days, Dan came back and Bakalar/Grubb are solid. I’m sure there are others that joined after the fact, but it just didn’t feel like GB without the core group. (Sidenote: hope jason is doing well with all the health stuff).
At one point I think Jan was downplaying Jeffs importance, and that may have been the last time I gave them my time.
I feel like the writing was on the wall since the last acquisition. Respect for them, trying to keep it alive, for as long as they did.
I have no ill will toward Gerstmann, but there came a point where he became very unentertaining, so when I heard he was gone, it was a good signal for me to give them another try, and Grubb fit into that old Gerstmann interviewer role very well while also being a more positive guy and someone who might break some news. They had a really good group, and Blight Club was an all-timer Giant Bomb show.
Yeah, he did seem to get more negative near the end, most likely due to everything happening behind the scenes. And after Ben left, he didn’t really connect with anyone left over. Him & Ben played off each-other quite well, was reminiscent of Ryan, in a way.
JackbyDevTheir video content is pretty good.